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Soapy Joe posted:I scanned the thread but couldn't see my question. Forgive me if this is a double. Call a Canadian embassy somewhere else (in the EU and Schengen area). Or by 'now' do you mean within an hour instead of in the next few days? I work with Schengen visa, but I don't know the rules that apply to those who don't have to apply for a visa in advance of their arrival in the area (I think those have to be outside the area for two months before the can go back, unless they have a multi-entry visa of a longer validity, but I'm not even sure about that).
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Nov 4, 2010 17:09
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Soapy Joe posted:By "now" I mean before tomorrow morning which is when my ride leaves for Switzerland because I don't know when my next internet access will be. I'm going to keep trying to figure things out when I get there. I hope I don't need to be out for two months before coming back in. I'm travelling between continents by boat though and so far I've noticed that no one at any port seems to care that I'm enetering or exiting thier country. I actually had to track down the proper authorities to stamp me when I got to Spain. As unixbeard said, you're probably on a Schengenvisa, so Switzerland will not be outside the visa area. You could also try calling the Italian or Swiss immigration services or customs offices. They will probably know and can tell from the specifics of your passport, stamps and situation what to do. I mainly deal with Arabs with Schengen visa stickers in their passports that go to Amsterdam, so your situation isn't in my direct field of knowledge. What you also could do is call the Italian/Swiss embassy in Canada. Due to time differences they will probably still be open.
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Nov 4, 2010 17:49
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Omits-Bagels posted:The cheapest rooms are the ones with a lot of people in them. Private rooms are really expensive — sometimes as much as a hotel. You're right, hostels should be booked in advance. Otherwise you stand the chance to arrive at the hostel and find that there's only two beds available, of which one is in a private room and the other one is in a room shared with three loudly snoring strangers. Happened to me and a friend in Stuttgart earlier this year. Luckily I got the private room bed.
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Nov 13, 2010 08:29
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Saladman posted:Having driven through downtown Prague several times and spent a fair amount of time driving around Czech, I never really felt it was any different from the rest of Europe. Czech Republic's accident rate is not the highest in Europe either, nor is it even close. Greece has the worst drivers in Europe, statistically by fatal road accidents. Germany is pretty bad too. http://www.unece.org/trans/main/wp6/pdfdocs/RAS_2007.pdf Czechs owned cars before 1991.... Skoda is Czech, and they make / always have been a pretty significant manufacturer. Driving in Prague didn't feel that special to me either. It's just like driving in Italy: sometimes people just create extra lanes where there's room to do so. Greece I agree is much worse. It resembles the Middle East in driving styles. I'm glad I've never had to drive myself in Greece. I had a driver tell me that it's unsafe to go out onto the road in Greece without some alcohol in your body, so you're not scared to death the whole time. That said, I would feel a bit apprehensive about going to Prague in a rental car. The car I had with me when I visited the Czech Republic wasn't exactly a beater, but it wasn't new either and it was my own, so I didn't run the risk of getting screwed thrice, by the police, the insurance company and the rental company. In a shiny (more or less) new rental car, I doubt I would have dared to go there.
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Dec 27, 2010 20:08
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Comlink posted:ah, ok. although we will check out some of the tourist stuff, we're more interested in good eats/drinks and the night life. we'll probably stick with the 3 days. One of the most boring cities in Europe. Even my Slovak colleague agrees with me. Of course there's no need for it to be something special when Vienna is right around the corner.
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Jan 10, 2011 15:19
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Butthole Prince posted:I'm no longer a student and no longer have my ID, but I always thought it would be funny to create my own student ID from some fictional yet real sounding college to use in situations like that. Or, maybe not even a fictional school but just a small school. If it has a name that could even vaguely look like a school name in some foreign language, you're good to go in most cases. Validity is also not an issue. Most of the time, they'll just check that it says something that might conceivably sound like 'University' or 'college'.
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Jan 11, 2011 16:00
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bonzaisushi posted:So i am thinking of checking out Amsterdam, Barcelona and Ibiza next october for a honeymoon. Is Amsterdam still a good place to go for people that love weed? I have heard people say they are cracking down on tourism smokers an stuff like that but i never know who to believe. Thoughts? Is october a decent time to come check these places out? I dont have much a choice on the time of year so i hope it is. There are plans to change the system so coffee shops can only sell to locals who are members of their club, but nobody will be able to give you an accurate assessment of when these measures will be implemented. It could be July, but it could also very well be January. It could also be any time in between or never happen. My advice if you want to come to Holland for the drugs? Do it sooner rather than later, because our retarded governments are going back on drugs legalisation even faster than a tourist running from the station to nearest shop.
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Jan 16, 2011 14:39
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The statue in front of the building appears to be a WWI memorial, but there's no telling whether or not that memorial (or the building itself) is still in place. If I had to hazard a guess I would say it's in Belgium or France, because it fits their style of WWI monuments.
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Jan 23, 2011 08:58
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kissekatt posted:I'm going to Paris with my family for an extended weekend trip (Thursday noon - Monday noon) next week. Two of us have been to Paris before, three haven't. I have been considering visiting Versailles. On the one hand I'd like to actually see Versailles, but on the other hand it's over an hour in total travelling time back and forth and it might be the wrong season (bare gardens and similar) so I'm currently leaning against it. Any thoughts? Beyond the standard: The Musee Clemenceau. This is the house in which the guy who led France throughout World War One lived (and died). It's a nice snap shot of France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and people barely go there. It's not as flashy as the big museums (I remember the shop only having four different books for sale and nothing else), but it does offer audiotours in French and English. Another actual house: Jacquemart-André. This one is a little more opulent, being a villa, or rather a city palace. It has art (a regular collection and I think there's also always a travelling exhibit), but is also just a nice building.
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Feb 26, 2011 23:19
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GregNorc posted:Oh, and how prevalent are disposable phones in Western Europe? It'd be cool to have a phone, especially since I'll probably be trying to meet up with various people as I move across the continent. Is planning to get a tracphone a bit extravagant? (I'm guessing my iPhone either won't work, or will rape me on call charges) You can get a prepaid simcard and phone basically anywhere in Western Europe. The telephone companies have their own shops, there's shops that deal in all providers' stuff, and you can even get them at supermarkets. The stupid thing is that these cheap phones are locked to one provider in some countries, but a lot of the generic phone shops can also take care of that. That way you don't have to get a new phone every time you cross a border, just a new simcard.
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Mar 6, 2011 16:56
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:You don't need a new SIM. At least, assuming you buy a card from a Europe-wide carrier like Vodafone or T-Mobile. Never had a problem with my O2 SIM in any country, either. Even my current mTel (Bulgarian) phone can at least text if not call anywhere I am in Europe because the company is owned by Vodafone. In fact, for some odd reason, texting UK phones while in the UK from my Bulgarian phone cost less than texting Bulgarian phones while in Bulgaria. I don't know. But you might not be able to add prepaid credits to it outside of Bulgaria. This could be a problem. If they guy who originally posed the question is willing to jailbreak his iphone and remove the simlock, he can just buy a new simcard when the credits on his old one are gone and he's already in another country. I'd agree though that a lot can be done over wifi, even if it's not as easy to find open networks as it is in the US. But I think most hostels have wifi nowadays and a lot of cafés offer it to their customers as well.
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Mar 15, 2011 18:14
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HeroOfTheRevolution posted:Even with Bulgarian phones I can add prepaid credit online. With O2 or Vodafone or any other major carrier I can't imagine this being a problem, especially if he'll only be in western Europe where most of these carriers have brick and mortar stores anyways. I hadn't considered online. You're right. I just haven't had a prepaid phone since you had to buy actual cards in shops.
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Mar 16, 2011 18:47
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Doctor Malaver posted:http://dustinland.com/archives/archives489.html Chain smokers are easy to avoid in Slovenia?
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May 1, 2011 23:18
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Even in Schengen, they can still do 'random' checks. They're not random. If you're Moroccan and driving a Dutch Mercedes into Germany, you have a significantly larger chance of being pulled over than me, a white guy driving a small Toyota. They can also temporarily reinstate border controls for reasons of national security or severe risk of cross border criminal activity. These reasons do not exist at the moment, but a lot of countries are looking at reinstating checks to keep out Romanians who want to do our dirty work. They use Tunisian 'refugees' as a cover for this.
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May 16, 2011 16:57
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Fiskenbob posted:Vondelpark might have a bit of a bad rep with some Amsterdammers (I think?), but I enjoyed lazing around in there for hours when the weather was nice. We bought one of those one-time grills in a supermarket and had ourselves a little barbecue. Cheap! All of a sudden around 100 police men and 30 squad cars showed up, and shut the whole park down due to a massive fight, though, so I don't know if it might be considered a sketchy area at night. A word of advice, though: there's been talk of banning bbqs in the Vondelpark. I'm not sure about the time frame, if this new rule get's passed, though. So please inform yourself about where and when you can barbecue.
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Jun 8, 2011 00:01
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unixbeard posted:How long do you think it would take to drive from Zurich to Berlin at a fairly reasonable/unrushed rate? about 2 days? You could do it in a day, it's only 900 km. If you have two days you can stop and take the night off in a town halfway there, and then drive on comfortably the next day. Edit: It all depends on the car you're driving too. You can easily do 170 km/h in all comfort if your car is suited for it. The Autobahn is made for this kind of driving. EricBauman fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jun 13, 2011 |
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Jun 13, 2011 16:55
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Phaeoacremonium posted:I have a staggeringly stupid question for this thread. I'm trying to organise a business visa to Germany for a business trip with my academic co-supervisor. The company he works for does not allow one to travel for personal reasons before, during or after a company-approved trip. This is bullshit and I am trying to organise a little side-trip to Berlin after my main business is concluded without the company's approval since my rear end in a top hat boss won't consider the very well thought-out plan I laid in front of him for my after-visit trip (which will be paid for in its entirety by me, by the way). Anyway, it is devolving into a ghastly nightmare which may or may not result in me being in deep poo poo when I get back. Be that as it may, I have my appointment with the German consulate in less than two weeks time and I intend to be prepared for any eventuality. Most of the times it would. Depends on where you're from, whether you've travelled to the Schengen area before, whether or not you've got ties that would bring you back to wherever your from, whether or not you've got enough money to take care of yourself. Too many factors really. Call ahead to the consulate to be sure. They can tell you. They can probably even give you the more or less exact wording such a statement from your girlfriend's parents would have to be in. The answer to questions like this is always going to be 'call the consulate'. It's their job to know.
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Jun 13, 2011 18:41
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unixbeard posted:Hmm. I will probably rent a car as I am moving from Zurich to Berlin and have some stuff that is not easily shipped (guitar, bike). Since none of the rental places let you return a van in a different country I'll probably get a station wagon or something. I have to do some dancing around handing over my apartment so I'd probably leave Zürich in the afternoon and stop for the night somewhere, maybe Stuttgart or Nümberg. Do you have any idea how much to estimate for fuel for the trip? For like a 1.8L station wagon? That sounds like you could comfortably make it. Do call ahead for accommodation, though. I didn't last weekend and there happened to be opera festivals everywhere in central Germany. We had to sleep in a smudgy motorway motel, instead of heading out into the bustling night life of whatever town we would end up in, like we intended to do. I don't know about fuel, I've never owned a station wagon. And I don't really pay attention to these kinds of things. I'll go to a gas station when I need to and just pay whatever a full tank of gas costs, because what else can you do?
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Jun 13, 2011 20:01
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goldboilermark posted:Maybe this is a ridiculous question, and I apologize if so, but I changed some money over from Chinese RMB to Euros and got a 500 Euro bill. Is that going to be a bitch to get rid of? Will I have to go to a bank to get it broken down, or will the hostel/restaurant/store that I go to take a 500 Euro bill? Well, no grocery store or corner bar is going to take a 500 euro bill because they'd have to give you the entire contents of the cash register for change. If you were to go buy a computer, some furniture or an expensive watch or something like that, it would probably be accepted, but still not happily. Normal people never see a 500 bill and are not confident they would spot a forgery, and if the one they're taking from you is a fake, they are out a lot of money. I think it's better to try and find a bank that will change it into 50s. I don't know whether they do that if you don't bank with them, though.
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Jun 18, 2011 09:54
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GregNorc posted:
The Musée Clemenceau! Nobody ever goes there, and it's a really neat normal house from around 1920. Where the prime minister lived. The one from World War I. I can't remember having to pay to get in, but if I did it can't have been more than three euros. They have an audio guide in English. So maybe I paid for that.
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Jul 11, 2011 23:33
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Bastard posted:Which sites are located in lovely banlieus? Or did you mean "derp, wanted to go to Versailles, ended up in B13 to get my parkour on"? St Denis Cathedral is just one that immediately pops into my mind.
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Jul 12, 2011 15:59
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Hamclam posted:Hey anyone in Amsterdam wanna go for drinks! Me and my gal are going to be here for the next few days and we like making friends. There are bands and djs playing at the vangogh museum on friday if anyone wants to go on a goony museum tour. I can't go, but you might want to post in the Dutch thread, there's always a bunch of people looking to go out in that thread.
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Jul 28, 2011 20:31
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Ziir posted:What's this rumor/talk I keep hearing about Holland passing a law that now Nobody really knows what's going to happen. Some mayors and police chiefs have already said they won't uphold it if it ever becomes a law definitively (I think it hasn't been voted on yet, at least not in the senate). Edit: But everyone coming for the weed should do so sooner rather than later. With this conservative government I can see measures like this actually coming to reality.
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Aug 23, 2011 11:18
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can't be sold to foreigners in coffee shops, any truth to it?
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Saladman posted:I've also literally heard this exact same thing every six months for the past 6-8 years that they're "just about to ban Germans and Brits from our country." Is admitting Germans and British on shaky legal ground in your country? Have they only been admitted since the 1990s? Are many parties seriously against admitting Germans and British in any form? I think there's a difference. This is actual legislation in the making, right now.
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Aug 23, 2011 16:14
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NihilismNow posted:You know as well as i do that if the current cabinet remains mayors won't have any power over the police soon. So the mayors have no choice in upholding the law since the to be formed national police will take orders directly from the ministry of security and justice. Also, guess who's the next vp of the Raad van State? The current (anti-drugs) minister for the Interior.
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Aug 24, 2011 18:17
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Bum the Sad posted:Just looked it up and found out about the Schengen agreement and the 90 days thing. Is there literally nothing else you need to do other than hop on a plane? You probably also need medical insurance that will pay at least € 30,000 in the most extreme case. You will never need to use it, but you can be stopped and asked for proof of insurance by immigration at the airport. If you're white and coming in from the US, this is extremely rare though. I have had Arabs travelling from the Gulf complain about it when I worked the consular desk of a Dutch embassy over there, though. And also them throwing a huge stink and involving their embassy (to no avail) because they were refused entry.
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Jan 23, 2012 14:54
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Bum the Sad posted:Thanks for warning me though. It would suck to be the one in a thousand white Americans who get's asked that. I'd say it's more like one in a million. But still worth it to have the letter with you. And most travel insurance policies cover it, it's just that people never (need to) look up the actual amount covered.
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Jan 23, 2012 16:36
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Bum the Sad posted:I am guessing they assume that any American who can afford to cross the Atlantic has private insurance given the way our healthcare works? That, and customs officers know as well as anybody else that almost nobody will need the full amount of coverage in their 90 day stay in the Schengen area. If a problem is serious enough, repatriation is cheaper than 30k EUR and if it's not serious enough, it won't cost 30k for treatment.
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Jan 24, 2012 10:52
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Saladman posted:Switzerland, Germany, and NL might work depending on what field you're in, but to be honest most MA/MScs are done in the vernacular unless you're studying hard science at a top-tier university. More and more master's programmes in the Netherlands are now in English. I attended one in Conflict Studies and even history (my first master's) is now offered in English. And this is all in Nijmegen, the university that in some departments has more Germans than Dutch people. Amsterdam and Utrecht offer a lot of their social studies and arts programmes in English as well.
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Mar 8, 2012 15:25
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Laminator posted:Right, I meant reimbursement wise. If you end up getting hospitalized or something in a country that has universal health care, do you still get a bill since you're not a resident? This is why technically you need health insurance that covers up to EUR 30,000 when you enter the Schengen area (regardless of whether you apply for your visa at home or get one at arrival). If you're a white westerner immigration will most likely not check, though.
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May 28, 2012 16:00
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Laminator posted:I wouldn't. So if I don't have health insurance in the US or one's policy wouldn't extend coverage abroad, is it a good choice to get traveler's insurance to cover any potential health problems? It's actually a legal obligation.
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May 28, 2012 19:06
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Arnold of Soissons posted:The form asks for your date of arrival and first state of contact, which I won't really know 100% until I book the flight. I'm going to the Consulate tomorrow and I'm just going to go in with those blank and hope they don't mind. I'm probably stressing out about nothing, again. Let me preface this by saying that my experience is mainly in business and tourism visa and I barely assisted Americans back when I did this for a job, but what they will probably tell you is that you have to have a flight reservation rather than a booking. This was the line when I worked in a (Dutch) consular office, and it's supposed to be the same Schengen-wide. But possibly they don't care about the return flight that much for student visas/Americans.
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Jul 18, 2012 13:28
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I got a ticket from Switzerland sent to me in the Netherlands, four months after I got back from my vacation. It was for going five km over the limit in a tunnel. Some police forces will just do everything to catch you. I'd advise to not break the law, unless you know specifically that they can't catch you because it's been reported on. For instance: Dutch license plates in Belgium, because they use different systems and the Dutch government are being dicks towards the Belgians about backwards compatibility. Look for news stories like this if you're planning in advance to break the law. Also ask around to find out whether this situation still exists.
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Aug 6, 2012 18:27
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Bastard posted:Regarding trains from Amsterdam <-> Brussels: Due to troubles with the new type of train (the Fyra) on that route, and bickering between the Dutch and Belgian railways, that connection is hosed up. There's also (temporarily) an intercity train between The Hague and Brussels, so that would potentially allow you to do it with only one transfer. Depending on time and whether they will allow this service to continue. I also don't think it's in any of the planners for the NS (national rail) - out of spite, undoubtedly. Yeah, it's a pretty hosed up situation.
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Mar 3, 2013 14:59
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Hog Obituary posted:Aw cock. I booked a train ticket from Paris to Cologne that arrives at 3:15pm, but every single car rental place at the Cologne main train station closes at 3:00 on Saturdays. There's one that stays open later about 4km away. I could try changing my train ticket, but it looks like my only other option leaves at 8am, and I'd really prefer not to rush to make that one. There's going to be literally hundreds of taxis waiting outside the station. Take the exit to the Dom square and look for light beige Mercedeses. See Google Maps for what I mean: http://goo.gl/maps/Zu8g2 I don't know on what kind of day Google took these pictures, but in my experience this number of taxis is very common for Cologne.
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Apr 9, 2013 23:28
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:How abundant is free Wi-Fi in Europe? From what my study abroad returnees from Berlin told me, it's pretty much limited to the universities and Starbucks and McDonalds and stuff over in Germany. Yeah, it's that and random cafes. Some Eastern European countries (Macedonia, Georgia) have wifi everywhere, but this isn't yet the case for most parts of Western Europe.
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May 14, 2013 06:51
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HookShot posted:I can't speak for Venice or Madrid, Venice is a couple of days, maximum. It's not that big and it gets old really fast. Also: plan to go there with good weather. It's poo poo when it rains, but it's also quite poo poo when it's too hot and the entire city reeks (of what, I don't know).
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Jun 4, 2013 18:56
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Kolta posted:Now I'm headed to Berlin for a few days. Any suggestions on museums. Like, must see ones. Pergamon. They're likely still renovating, so it's a little harder than usual to find the entrance. Other than the Pergamon altar and the Babylonian gates in the adjoining museum, I thought the biggest attraction was the Roman market gate and the room they've built around it. It is pretty much like you're really there. Even with the tourists, because they would have been there even in 0AD.
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Jun 18, 2013 22:56
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MrOnBicycle posted:Thanks! Judging from the postings and pictures of a former colleague of mine, the city could very well be entirely full of people decrying what the vile Russians have done to this once proud Prussian city, and other stuff that smacks of German nationalism, nazi apology and revisionism.
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Jun 24, 2013 18:31
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Waci posted:Decrying what the Soviet Union did to their city is rather common in areas they occupied. I fail to see how that falls into the category of stuff that smacks of nazi apology and revisionism. Please elaborate. All over central and eastern Europe cities were in many cases primarily German and Jewish in population. All over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the population composition has been changing, with the inhabitants of the land around the cities (Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, strange local minorities) coming into the cities. In many cases, like that of Danzig, ethnic Germans clung to power and forced crises. All of the Königsberg fan sites I've seen claim that cities like Königsberg, Danzig and the Baltic capitals have, or should have German identities. I'm not Stalin's biggest fan either (and I wouldn't defend Soviet soldiers raping their way to Berlin, obviously), but the campaigns of 1944-1945 only speeded up a process that was ongoing, in which the population of the country also took the cities. It might also have been the tone in the material that this guy showed me that irked me more than that, constantly repeating that the PRUSSIAN city, German this, German that. Dj Vulvio posted:I doubt there's a single ethnic German left anywhere in the entire region; Yeah, sorry, I meant the type of tourist that go there, rather than the original population longing back to the good old days when the SS liberated the Baltic.
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Jun 24, 2013 20:48
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